FINALLY, television has treated us to a drama that reflects the very real progress made by women in the first two decades of the third millennium. Far from feeding us the usual fodder of a world populated by male leaders and female wives, the BBC’s gripping Sunday-night serial Bodyguard has created a drama in which, true to life, women sit shoulder-to-shoulder with men in a series of responsible and powerful jobs.

From Keeley Hawes’s Home Secretary Julia Montague to Pippa Haywood’s chief superintendent Lorraine Craddock and Gina McKee’s counter-terrorism chief Anne Sampson, the show is packed with smart, driven women who interact on an equal footing with smart, driven men. And rightly so. While not so long ago such casting would have smacked of unbelievability – of a television station intent on foisting its own diversity agenda on the viewing public – the experiences of countless women in the real world show that the show’s creator Jed Mercurio has got Bodyguard’s characterisations spot on.

Indeed, at this very moment not only are the Scottish and UK governments led by women in the shape of Nicola Sturgeon and Theresa May, but under Cressida Dick and Dany Cotton the Metropolitan Police and London Fire Brigade are too. Further afield even such male-dominated institutions as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank have women at the helm (Christine Lagarde and Kristalina Georgieva respectively) while at one point last year all these roles as well as those of the Federal Reserve Bank chair, UK home secretary and Scottish Labour and Conservative party leaders were held by women at the same time.

Why, then, after Bodyguard first aired on BBC1 did the Radio Times publish a story quoting viewers who, it said, “couldn’t accept so many women in positions of authority and responsibility”?

If women quite clearly can hold such positions – and not just one anomalous female, but many all at the same time – why would so many viewers of Bodyguard be so convinced that the show’s characters are not true to life?

While one explanation is that old misogynies die hard, another is that public perceptions have simply failed to keep pace with reality, with a media that continues to be controlled by men – who write stories to be read and remembered by other men – being partly to blame.

If you want proof of that just take a look at the commentary that accompanied the final edition of this paper’s stablemate the Sunday Herald over the weekend.

While columnist Vicky Allan recalled working on a paper whose focus on issues such as gender identity and the eradication of domestic violence allowed her to nurture both her feminism and social awareness, the numerous male journalists eulogising the publication mainly had a very different take.

The Sunday Herald’s male alumni recalled a paper staffed by extraordinary men who went to great lengths to tell the stories of other men – extraordinary or otherwise – while women barely featured.

They are far from the exception: in a world where male editors continue to prioritise the stories that male journalists write about men and their manly escapades women are rarely seen, heard or remembered, resulting in them being largely erased from public narratives.

Unless of course there is the opportunity to portray them as bikini-clad bodies or, worse still, the authors of their own abuse.

On the flipside, it should come as no surprise that in the wake of the sexual harassment claims made against former first minister Alex Salmond that so many male-run newspapers have printed articles questioning whether current First Minister Nicola Sturgeon should be in some way held to account for her predecessor’s actions.

In such a climate it is no wonder that so many TV programmes do not reflect the reality being experienced by a growing number of women in the real world, with too many scriptwriters returning to the classic EastEnders trope of developing a female character by subjecting her to some form of domestic or sexual abuse.

Depressingly, at least four of that soap’s current main characters – Kathy Beale, Linda Carter, Kat Moon and Stacey Fowler – have been involved in rape storylines, while violence against women is a recurrent theme in the show.

Rape and violence may be a fact of life for too many women, but it is not our only story and there is nothing empowering or redemptive in repeatedly telling it. Which is why a show like Bodyguard, which portrays women as thinkers and leaders as well as wives and mothers – and reflects a woefully under-told reality in the process – is so welcome.

Sure, we’re still a long way from achieving gender equality, but to suggest that women cannot and do not fill numerous powerful roles is as reductive as to say us women are all watching Bodyguard in the hope of being rewarded with a Richard Madden bum shot.